Luke, I Am Your Father

It was a Friday afternoon during my senior year of college. I parked my car outside the Shadow Mountain Office Center and walked into the mazelike structure, sniffing to conclude that apple cinnamon air freshener was being pumped through the ventilation system. It took me several minutes to wander through the building, passing insurance agents and hair salons, and locate Terry’s office, which I only half wanted to find.

Terry ran a center that provided free counseling to anyone referred in by a pastor, and I’d filled out the extensive intake forms a couple of weeks before this, my first visit. Something about the walk up stairs and around corners felt like a scene from a Star Wars movie, and I don’t think it was the ‘80s architecture.

The door jingled when I opened it, and I shakily sat down on the lobby couch, wondering if the bell on the door would suffice or if I should try to announce my presence in some way. The decision was made for me when Terry himself appeared from down the hall, smiling and offering his hand.

Terry looked more like the counselor type than anybody I’d ever seen in my life. His round face protruded him into the world softly and gently, with thin lips and eyes and wispy medium-brown hair. I was terrified of him and his loafers.

I followed him to his small office, where he took a seat at his desk chair, and I sat opposite him on a squishy, cream-colored chenille couch. He fiddled with a tape recorder before squeezing the play button, taping our conversation.

“So,” he began, still smiling. “What we usually do here is first I tell you some of my story to make it easier for you to talk about you. Okay?”

“Okay,” I returned, my voice robotic and extra loud in my head. I think it was the second word I’d said since I got there.

Terry’s story took at least twenty minutes to tell. It involved his early, somewhat impromptu marriage and the depression that long plagued his life. I nodded and murmured, “Mm-hmm” a lot, trying hard to quiet my nerves and pay attention.

The story was skin-crawlingly uncomfortable, mostly because I knew that when it was over, I would have to talk. Terry would ask me questions to find out why I had come, and I would have to say things I didn’t want to hear myself say. The truth was that I had come to lay myself there on that couch like a broken toy.

I was just so cold. All my tissues had frozen, and everything hurt. It hurt to move or talk or breathe.

My mother had this kitchen knife that curved upward, the serrations exaggerated like bite marks for the optimum cutting of limes. Every time I saw that knife, I wanted to throw it away, hiding it at the bottom of the trash so that no one would miss it until it was gone, because I had become afraid of it. I was afraid that it would one day hurt me, with my own hand doing the hurting. That was why I came here. Because I was afraid.

But I didn’t tell Terry any of this for some reason. I answered his questions scantly, and then I just sat on the chenille couch and cried.